VFX – Alien Worlds

Today in VFX, we took what we learned last week and built upon it. We didn’t stop with the sky but instead were introduced to Matte Painting. We were shown a few videos about what can be made in the industry by professionals and were given a simple task to do; create our own. We could create any scene we wanted to and it could involve video, pictures or a mixture of both. Since I’m not totally confident with video yet, I chose pictures.

I really had no idea what it was I was going to create or what style it would follow. I found myself on Google looking for inspiration and came across a picture of an alien world. This appealed to me and I’d decided there and then that’s what I was going to create. Straight off I had an image of a planet visible in the sky from where this picture would be set so I searched out an image of this.

Searching for skies I came across a sunset type of picture, one that already looks (at least to me) that its been created for something like this and then a nature scene followed. I decided that I wanted an image that’d look down onto the top of something so I chose a forest top picture.

Using the sky replacement techniques learned last week I combined these three images and made an alien world.

(Above pictures are the originals chosen with the blended below)

Next I applied a feather to both of the planets and a colour correction via the ‘Curves’ tool to alter the colour of the atmosphere.

I decided to have a building placed onto the land, kind of like an off world research station as my thoughts had made it be. Googling buildings gave me a tower which I insterted but I felt it needed something else so I searched for and added a side building to further enhance that effect I was feeling. Using the pen tool in After Effects I was able to mark the edges of the buildings and mask them into the scene. I had to duplicate the tree tops layer however, add a linear wipe and feather another edge over the top of those buildings to make it look like they were amongst the trees rather than just stuck on top of them. I also had a bit of an issue with blending these buildings in as the pictures chosen were taken on bright, sunny days and I couldn’t seem to find that magic mark that’d make them fit in with the scene properly. Anyway I tried and the result is below.

I played around with the layers; altering the colour curves, adding a slight blur and Calculations/darken effects to the buildings in an effort to blend them in better when I realised that the scene needed something else. I though of maybe adding a cave opening to it, as if you were looking out of it from a height over the landscape. I did find one that I thought would fit but once I’d cut it out (with the pen tool) and placed it, it didn’t look right so I had to find another.

I eventually chose another that I ended up feeling was more like what I was looking for and cut the opening of that out. It wasn’t until I had and had placed it into my scene that I noticed a figure in the bottom left. You can just see it in the image above, it turns out there’s an old lady there who’s photobombed the picture I wanted. By the time I noticed this it was the end of class (it got cut short today) so I saved up and I’d sort it out when I got home.

However, instead of going through the process to cut her out, I used her in the scene as a creature figure (sorry old lady). I darkened the cave mouth down and Googled again a alien creature type figure. Not sure what I was looking for and not really happy with the figures, creatures and aliens that Google was showing in its results, I stumbled across a human-ish figure that I imported and darkened down. I placed this into the scene on the bottom right to go with the alien old lady.

I feathered the edges of the cave a little and this ended up giving a slight shimmer to it. Initially I wasn’t happy with it but the more I look at it, the more it grows on me and I begin to think of it as a glow of the dying light.

And there is my scene. I’m quite happy with it too. Next time, I need to try video to see if I can do that. Until then though, here’s the process in all its giffy goodness.

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